Seattle Market Updates…

The median price for a single-family home in Seattle topped the half-million-dollar mark for the first time last month, the latest sales figures show. That price, $501,000, was up 10.1 percent from last year’s $455,000, the Northwest Multiple Listing Service reported Monday. (Median means half the houses sold for more, half sold for less.) The report is unwelcome news to those already priced out of the local housing market. A worker would have to earn $57 an hour — about $119,000 a year — to afford that Seattle home, according to the Seattle chapter of the Urban Land Institute.

And on the Eastside, a worker needs to earn nearly $152,000 a year to afford a house with the $643,750 median price there in August. “The median prices … really make owning a home a distant dream for workers in our community,” said Kelly Mann, executive director for the Urban Land Institute. The four-county Puget Sound area experienced a 5 percent increase in sales prices from last year, which looks puny after 2-½ years of double-digit appreciation in the region. But nationally, housing prices fell 3.2 percent between April and June.• In King County , a single-family home sold for a median price of $477,345 in August, 9.7 percent higher than in August 2006. The median condo price rose 5.8 percent to $285,000.